


Omnia mutantur, nihil interit

by the_casual_cheesecake



Series: Memento Mori [1]
Category: Marvel 616
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Everyone is poly because Illuminati, It's Canon But Make It Gay, M/M, New Avengers Vol. 3 (2013), Porn with Feelings, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:14:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25075954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_casual_cheesecake/pseuds/the_casual_cheesecake
Summary: Part I: Omnia mutantur, nihil interit - Everything changes, nothing ends.Or: Steve Rogers falls and starts a ticking clock to the end of the world. And Namor is wrapped up in a change of his own.
Relationships: Namor the Sub-Mariner/T'Challa, Namor the Sub-Mariner/Tony Stark, Namor/T'Challa/Tony Stark/Reed Richards/Stephen Strange/Black Bolt/Hank McCoy/Bruce Banner, past Steve Rogers/Tony Stark - Relationship
Series: Memento Mori [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1816051
Comments: 8
Kudos: 13





	Omnia mutantur, nihil interit

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Imperium, my wonderful partner on this project. We started this idea together and life stopped Imp from continuing it with me, but it's yours in spirit darling <3  
> And thank you to Kiyaar for doing beta work <3 
> 
> This series is a Hickmanvengers rewrite but with more gay sprinkled in for joy. This fic is Namor POV.  
> It's a work in progress that isn't finished, but it's sat in my drafts for a while now and I think posting it will help me work on it. So, if you like it, and would like to see me write more of it, feed me comments and kudos because the muse needs validation. 
> 
> I'll write warnings at the beginning of each chapter so you can skip or know what you'll be walking into, those who've read my writing before know that I'm a bit of an angst monger. No worries though, this one is a love story. 
> 
> Have fun and Memento Mori.

This is how it starts, a betrayal that ends decades of friendship. A crack in the table. A schism that tears men apart. Magic always has a price, Strange says. Namor thinks the price for this one will be the epilogue to their cabal. 

Steve Rogers lays on the floor and he looks dead. Namor knows he isn’t but something doesn’t feel right about the view anyway. Tony Stark is hovering over his body like he’s breaking apart. This was a mistake. When Namor suggested the No Wives rule he didn’t do it because he wanted to fuck with Reed Richards, although that is a wonderful motive. It was precisely to avoid this scene of mourning; Namor takes no pleasure in the wailing of widowers. 

T’Challa looks wounded as well. The wound of a failed leader more than a lover, Namor is grateful that for all their clashes and battles, all their delusions about what they are and what they could be, he didn’t have to watch T’challa fall. 

Everything about this coalition of madmen seems broken like the table they sit at. Steve Rogers’ falling seems to mark them all for a tragic end. It’s the cawing of crows over the Necropolis. What a waste. 

Stephen Strange is the first of them to leave the chamber. He passes by Stark, on his knees still, pauses for a moment and then seems to think better of it, leaving him to his grief. Namor wonders if Stark realizes they’re all still here. It’s a pathetic sight, really. Unsuited to Tony’s place at this table, when they all bear their unforgivable acts with dignity. Namor scoffs. No wives.

He opens his mouth to hurl words at Stark, an insult, perhaps. He hasn’t decided yet. Calculating words before they’re spoken is not one of his habits. T'Challa’s hand lands on Namor’s shoulder in a rough but silent grip, a warning. 

Fine, then. Let the widowers grieve, his time is better spent elsewhere anyway. 

He gets up from his seat, leveling a final look at T’Challa. He leaves the room and its silent occupants to contemplate their failings.

Namor despises weakness. He isn’t arrogant enough to not recognize the effect Stark’s plight has had on him. It snuck its way under his skin and now it itches at his own weakness, seeking commiseration. He has let himself get carried away with the King of Wakanda, and now it’s a vulnerability that chokes him with its presence. 

The Necropolis is cold the way all magic is cold. He shivers as he walks through her stone halls, made by people who would murder him on sight. He feels like a thief, like he has broken in where he should never have set foot. The cold seeps into his bones and he misses the warmth of the ocean fiercely. Wakanda smells like violence and regrets. Her air seeps into his body like an alien thing and infects him with what he has inflicted on her. Every step in the temple is a mistake in the making. He should leave this coalition of misery and never look back, but he isn’t Steve. Namor is a king first and foremost, and he will not leave his people to burn in the dark for the sake of his comfort. 

The temple is lit with fire, it’s like it was designed to be hostile to him, like T'Challa ancestors knew he’d be stealing his way inside their walls and wanted to make it as punishable an offense as possible. Water and fire. Namor isn’t used to thinking of himself as vapors instead of the sea. The panther statue on the wall glares at him, accusation in the ancient stone. 

The ray of sun filtering in from the balcony hits his skin and he shivers. He does not wrap his arms around himself; the indignation of the cold is punishment enough. 

Strange is on the balcony, eyes closed. He fits the landscape with his shades of red, blue and yellow in a way Namor never could. The sun embraces him and paints the white in his hair silver, the wind dances with his cape gently, Wakanda flirts with him with all her might. Namor is inexplicably jealous of his ease in this place that is no home to either of them, but at least the heat of his envy warms his ice-cold skin. 

He moves to join the man. Strange hums in acknowledgment, but his eyes remain closed. 

“Are you praying for your sins?” Namor asks, aiming for derision but landing at a sigh. 

Strange thinks on his answer. Namor looks at the horizon, at the brilliant shades of red from a yellow sun on yellow ground, at the desert that doesn’t look barren, at a kingdom of the dead. Contradictions upon contradictions. 

“I’m praying for all of ours, I suppose.” It’s a nonanswer, but Strange was never a man for transparency.

“I think it’s wise to start collecting the prayers now. Our fall from grace won’t be gentle.” Namor answers, keeping his voice steady. The cold will not defeat him.

Strange’s eyes rake over Namor, his gaze indecipherable as lust or curiosity. Namor straightens his back under it regardless. 

“Steve Rogers deserved better from us.” Strange says, and casually unfastens his cloak. 

“We deserved better from him.” Namor sneers, but before he has time to burst out in a tirade of indignation, Strange’s shaking hands drape the cloak around his shoulders and he’s struck mute. The material is soft and warm and he almost closes his eyes under its weight. Strange secures it on his neck and moves back to look, then nods once in approval. Offense and gratefulness war within Namor in a futile battle that ends with him lacking words, silent in the face of incredulity. 

“Perhaps we deserved more goodwill, but success was not owed us,” Strange replies to Namor’s unfinished thought, “there are no winners here, it is where the dead lay after all.” 

Strange fixes the collar of his cloak on Namor, his fingers brush Namor’s skin, they don’t linger exactly, but Strange makes no move to stop. 

“The winter we face is freezing, submariner, don’t let yourself get buried under the cold.” Strange says, softly, and then he leaves Namor, dumbfounded, on the balcony.

Namor tugs the material around him, burrowing inside it, now that he’s alone in his weakness. It smells like magic, like Strange. The warmth spreads across his limbs, and he sighs a long, grateful sigh for it and sends a curse into the air at the Wakandan ancestors. 

“Careful, they have no patience for insults.” T'Challa’s voice comes from behind him and Namor freezes in the process of burying his nose in the red velvet. An absurd shame spreads through him, like he’s been caught cheating.

“They’ve tolerated me so far, I feel they have much more patience than you realize.” Namor retorts. 

T'Challa’s hand runs down his spine through the cloak, leaving trails of fire in its wake. T’Challa’s warmth is aggressive; it feels like an attack instead of an embrace. The heat of him is preposterous. Namor thinks T'Challa must have stolen all the heat in Wakanda into his being. T'Challa hand lingers at the small of Namor’s back for a long moment, then cedes its place back to the cold, when T'Challa moves to lean elbows on the stone.

T'Challa glances at him from the corner of his eye and doesn’t take the bait. Patience indeed. 

“You could have asked me for warmer clothes.” He says instead.

Namor stares. If this is jealousy, then T'Challa’s honestly should stun him; if it’s pity, then he wants none of it. He is, once again, rendered speechless. He hates this syndicate of clever men with all the cells in his being. Feeling stupid is not enjoyable. 

He studies T’Challa’s strong features. The light of the setting sun paints him in yellows and reds, etches danger into his dark skin. He’s always imagined T'Challa as the leader of a pride of lions; standing above his castle, his presence spreading outwards and seeping into the pores of Wakanda. Being here feels like being inside his brain, a wonder and a warning, like standing next to a predator. His every minuscule movement is a possible prologue to a pounce. 

“Tony left for Avengers tower,” T'Challa says. Namor isn’t sure what prompted this statement, but T'Challa does tend to coax the world to bend for him the way he wants it to --as kings do. The course of a conversation is child’s play in comparison. 

“Steve Rogers and Tony Stark were doomed as soon as they started. Titans are not meant to invade each other’s dominions.” Namor says dryly. Stark’s wounded wailing over his husband won’t awaken compassion in Namor; Stark has chosen the thing that he loves, let him be murdered by it. 

“What of us, then?”

“Us?” Namor repeats. 

Under the cloak floating in the wind, Namor is still as the walls around him. T’Challa doesn’t seem affected by the statement he just made. Like it’s regular for them to discuss this. Like it isn’t condemned to stay in the dark. Like they’re normal. His weakness for T’Challa climbs up his throat to choke him, and then: 

“The Illuminati.” T'Challa continues, and Namor drowns a self-deprecating chuckle. He is, for a moment, completely mortified at himself, he doesn’t know if to blame his libido or his heart for sneaking such treacherous thoughts into his brain, but he designates the slip as unacceptable and resolves to handle it later.

“The Illuminati have been a mistake since we formed, we’ve signed our own doom a long, long time ago.” Namor laughs, loud and boisterous, “Welcome to your death, King of Fools.” 

T'Challa narrows his eyes at him. 

“My patience with you is not infinite, Namor. Do not make me fulfill my promise before it is due. You still have time to draw more breath.” 

Namor smirks, “Pray tell, who’d be warming your bed then? Your moral superiority?” 

T'Challa advances on him so fast that Namor hardly sees him. His claws are out and they are dangerously close to Namor’s neck. T'Challa invades his space and Namor doesn’t feel threatened, he feels owned. It’s absolutely absurd. T'Challa doesn’t touch him, even his claws stay just far enough away as to not graze his skin. When he speaks, his breath ghosts over Namor’s lips like the hot, whirling wind of the Sahara.

“When you open your mouth to speak, I want you to remember that I am capable of shutting it for you. Contemplate carefully - a king should have significant final words.” T'Challa hisses, each word making its way inside Namor’s mouth in the form of a breath, each settling in his lungs like an invasion. 

Their foreplay has reached its zenith and teeters above its violent conclusion, so really, Namor has no choice but to close T'Challa’s self-imposed distance and press his lips to his, a bridge towards pleasure suspended over the savagery. 

T'Challa’s hand closes around his throat. He kisses like an inferno, his tongue a conquering force, he kisses with the weight of an entire nation. Namor bites T'Challa’s lips between his teeth until he tastes copper. He licks at the wound and revels in stealing T'Challa’s blood into himself, taking the blood of his ancient line as an enemy. A desecration that mirrors their union. Namor has always enjoyed a bit of blasphemy. 

T’Challa’s claws dig into the skin of Namor’s neck but they don’t cut him, he feels T’Challa’s longing for his blood through his kisses. Each one carries murderous intent; each one a renewal of vows. 

T'Challa breaks the kiss, but lingers for a final repose with his lips touching Namor’s. They breathe each other’s air for a long moment, then T'Challa moves away. He pauses at the entrance back inside the castle and whispers one last condemnation. 

“You’ve bitten your poison into me, but do not think that it will erode my hate for you, Namor.” 

Namor is left alone once more, the cold Wakandan sun setting behind him, and a problem of weakness that hovers like a shadow in his path.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has a tumblr post if you would like to reblog it: [TUMBLR](https://the-casual-cheesecake.tumblr.com/post/622749173153972224/omnia-mutantur-nihil-interit)


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